August 15th, 2016, 8:15am by Sam Wang

Today on The Takeaway, I discuss the impact of Evan McMullin’s entry into the Presidential race. His biggest effect will be downticket, where control of Congress is in the balance. The basic evidence: McMullin is a House GOP staffer, not a politician; and for every 1% of Republican turnout that he can salvage, they can recover up to six House seats – which could be crucial in determining control. As of this weekend, McMullin will be on the ballot in Colorado and Minnesota, where six swing districts are on the line (CO-03, CO-06, MN-01, MN-02, MN-03, and MN-08).

22 Comments so far ↓

It doesn’t seem like the GOP can reasonably expect McMullin to draw no votes away from Trump. The “he’s distasteful but we’re loyal” vote seems substantial. Does the McMullin strategy thus imply that the GOP is quietly giving up on Trump being able to win? Or is it a bet-hedging move, and the GOP quietly buries McMullin if Trump regains ground?

The GOP has indeed given up on any hope for a Trump victory and now are merely deciding how best to deal with that choice for down-ticket candidates. McMullin is clearly not intending to draw votes from Trump but rather only trying to return GOP votes that would otherwise not vote for Trump, so they will then more likely also vote for down-ticket Republicans.

Right, Robert, your explanation was the starting point for my question, not the answer to it: while McMullin is clearly not _intending_ to draw votes from Trump, it’s seems inevitable that he _will_. The question is thus whether McMullin’s run is strong evidence that the GOP establishment has in fact given up on Trump if we don’t already take that as a given.

The biggest problem here is that it’s too late for many states for McMullin to get on the ballot. Just as an example, I believe he has already missed Ohio and North Carolina’s deadlines. Jon Ralston said today he missed Nevada. He has already missed California. Apparently he did make Colorado, and we’ll see about Utah (where he could actually affect the Presidential race) today.

I believe he has 3 strategies for states in which the deadline has passed.
1. Try to get on the ticket of an already established party that will be on the ballot.
2. Sue the state in question on constitutional grounds.
3. Write-in campaign.

I am generally pessimistic that he’ll get any traction, outside of Utah and Arizona.

This article from National Review outlines his entire strategy. Sounds to me like it might be more an exercise in ego than anything else.

One thing I wonder: Is there a risk that this move alienates Trump voters who would otherwise vote GOP downticket, on the basis that they’ll see this as the party backstabbing him? Or will the party be far enough removed from individual candidates that this won’t have an effect?

Stupid technical question: How does McMullin’s name get out to Republicans who are thinking of skipping the election? He will not have access to the RNC databases of names and addresses, nor (I suspect) will he have money to reach voters via mail/email/door-to-door.

Here in NJ in 2012 we had 10 parties running candidates. In addition to the Republicans and Democrats and Green and Libertarians there were the Socialist Workers, American Third Position, NSA did 911, Justice, Constitution, Socialist party, etc etc. How does Evan McMullin hope to stand out among this chaff?

Perhaps Trump will do the heavy lifting for him. All McMullin has to do is needle Trump, and there’s a good chance that Trump counter-punch loudly and repeatedly, providing McMullin a lot of free publicity.

That theory requires that some non-trivial part of the electorate is simultaneously so “high information” that they are aware McMullin is running while also being so “low information” that it wouldn’t occur to them that they should show up and vote for down-ticket races even if they don’t like the presidential candidate. The more plausible explanations to me are that (a) McMullin will actually try to win Utah so that if neither major party candidate gets a majority of the electoral vote and the race is thrown to the (Republican-controlled) House, McMullin will be a non-Trump/Hillary option; and (b) McMullin is there to try to bleed off support from Gary Johnson in an effort to keep Johnson from qualifying for the presidential debates and to keep the Libertarian party below the 5% national vote cut-off for federal funding.

The LDS Church is often perceived as an American church outside the USA. The church sends thousands of missionaries throughout Latin America. Given the church’s long association with Republican politics, this presents a dilemma. Most of their growth and outreach is among Hispanics, but the R candidate has a 15% approval rate among Hispanics. Voting for Democrats is also problematic because the church strongly opposes gay marriage.

Finally, the church is probably not thrilled with a thrice divorced playboy whose wife posed for a softcore porn lesbian pictorial.

It seems to me a fair number of anti-Trump Republicans will also vote for Gary Johnson and then vote for the Republicans down ticket, so I would be surprised to see the GOP lose the House, even if it’s a Hillary landslide. The Senate looks pretty good for the Democrats, however.

Could be…but I am struck by the parallel movement in Clinton-v-Trump polls and the generic Congressional ballot. Both moved down around the time of the RNC, and both came back up. This seems potentially ominous for Republicans.

My thought on that is even if this year sees an uptick in ticket-splitting compared to the last few elections, the overall trend of polarization has really strengthened the parties that much as national brands. Disgust at the direction one’s brand has taken at its most prominent level will lead to more voters punishing their brand to send a message, rather than take the more nuanced approach of assessing each individual on the ballot.

The rise of 24 hour news, social media, and live instant reactions has chipped away at the “all politics is local” paradigm. Where presidential elections used to be like the Olympics (a couple of weeks every 4 years), they’re now more like the NFL and have people talking basically all year, every year.

And despite seeming like such a bad fit for the GOP, this may actually be the ideal circumstance for a Trump candidacy: polarization has given him a floor he would have lacked in previous elections, and his opponent doesn’t seem to be a generational figure reshaping the map with an expanding electoral coalition (like Reagan or Obama). That this is the perfect storm for Trump says a lot about where his numbers have been.

A previous commenter said “I see a GOP House/Senate as well as 4,125 of 7,383 state legislators.”
I’m already thinking 2020 when the next census will take place followed by redistricting done by those state legislatures. Is it better to work through the legal system to control partisan gerrymandering, or to start now to change the party composition of the legislatures? ActBlue doesn’t give me a clue.